Lunar newsletter: China’s Gen Z and how the ’90s failed women
- Lunar is a weekly curated selection of news, interviews and features dedicated to celebrating women in Asia and sharing stories that matter
Chinese photographer Luo Yang spent most of 2019 trying to capture a generation that is as talked-about and embedded in the culture of sharing as it is mysterious to those outside of it. Her latest series, “Youth”, explores Gen Z subjects from Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other parts of China.
Love, sexuality, body positivity and self-determination are a few of the themes that emerge from Luo’s project, one filled with tales of “young adults already mature beyond their childish appearance, boys who defy the social codes with their disturbing fragility, and girls who proudly display their bodies”.
It’s a shift away from her decade-long project “Girls”, a series of powerful and recognisable images which focused on the evolving concept of womanhood, mostly focusing on subjects who, like Yang, were born in the 1980s. Her generation, shaped in part by the era of dramatic change under Deng Xiaoping, was not “as brave to express themselves and pursue their lives”, she says.
Stories worth sharing
